Some sketches from Birmingham Jazz Festival back in the summer. The swing dance people were great! I’ve been lazy about scanning my sketchbooks recently, so this is now…several months ago! I miss worrying about getting sunburnt when sketching…

When you draw a webcomic, sooner or later you’ll have to do some research. For example, if your characters wield swords, you should know what different kinds of real-world weapons look like and how people fight with them. If you’re writing a science fiction story, learn what modern spaceships look like and why. If you’re planning to subvert expectations, you need to know those expectations and why they might matter.

I write a historical webcomic set in medieval Japan. While there’s existing writing and art from that period, the language has evolved so much that the average modern Japanese reader would struggle to understand it. I understand almost no Japanese, and I can’t read kanji. Clearly, research was a challenge.